


ambient noise

by untiltheveryend



Series: the quiet passing of time [1]
Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: And Not Much Plot, Coming Out, F/F, F/M, Fluff, a bit - Freeform, i guess, just lots of gross disgusting fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4688030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re late. Professor Keeley keep you after class again?” Nita asked, teasingly.</p><p>Kit made a face at her, and then flopped onto the couch with an air of great weariness.</p><p>“No, but there was some kind of market day going on, so I had to walk all the way to the edge of campus to find somewhere quiet to do my Scotty spell.” Nita laughed at Kit’s put-upon tone.</p><p>“If you weren’t so squeamish about using my spot, it wouldn’t be such a problem,” Nita said. Kit gave her a scathing look.</p><p>“Neets. I am not going to use the abandoned girls bathroom in Albert Hall to teleport out of.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	ambient noise

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a bit of a mess and it doesn't really do anything/say anything/go anywhere, but if you want fluffy cute established relationship kit/nita this is the fic 4 u.
> 
> many many thanks to my two wonderful betas, [bannedfromzoos](http://bannedfromzoos.tumblr.com/) and [littleskywatcher](http://littleskywatcher.tumblr.com/) they are both amazing and without them this would be way more of a mess. all the good parts are their fault and all the mistakes are mine.
> 
> enjoy!

Nita squeezed her eyes shut stubbornly, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the cat that was standing on her pillow (and, consequentially, her hair) and purring obnoxiously loudly. 

“Kit,” she grumbled, without opening her eyes. He didn’t reply, but she knew he’d heard her because his legs shifted where they were tangled with hers under the sheets. 

“Kit, your cat is sitting on me.” Her voice was more insistent this time, although her eyes were still stubbornly closed.

“Not my cat,” Kit replied, and Nita rolled her eyes. It was an age-old argument that wasn’t likely to ever be resolved. 

She whined softly into her pillow, and Kit shifted with a sigh, just like she knew he would. This long into their relationship (and even longer into their partnership), Nita knew Kit better than she knew herself, sometimes.

Beside her, Kit rolled over and cleared his throat before starting to lazily recite a string of words in the Speech. Nita felt the spell plucking at the universe, a simple one designed to render the bedding slippery. It was more threat than intention, however, and the cat jumped off the bed with an offended sounding “Meow” before Kit had finished his fourth syllable. 

Kit and Nita’s bedraggled tom-cat stubbornly refused to communicate with either of them in the Speech or any other language, and so they were reduced to threats of small wizardries, since magic made the tom-cat itch and he tended to disappear whenever it was performed near him. 

Kit flopped back down with a satisfied sound, and hooked his leg over Nita’s to roll her towards him. She complied lazily, her arm flopping loosely over his back. He leaned in and pressed his nose against her right cheek where it had been buried in her pillow. She wriggled away halfheartedly. 

“Nose’s cold,” she mumbled, and felt Kit’s mouth twist into a smile where it was pressed against her jaw. 

They lay there for a while, tangled together in the warm heat of their bed. It was the enjoyable luxury of a Sunday morning, upon which neither of them had an early class, or a date to have breakfast with Carmela and her most recent romantic conquest. 

The blissful silence was prematurely ended by a loud meow from the direction of the doorway. 

Kit sighed. 

“He needs to be fed,” Nita told him. Kit sat up, and she opened her eyes to watch him pout at her.

“And I suppose you think I should go feed him, even though he’s your cat,” Kit said, his tone more amused than grumpy.

“Not my cat,” Nita told him primly. Kit laughed, and then turned to climb out of bed and disappear out the bedroom door. 

Nita rolled over to watch him go, and then briefly contemplated going back to sleep. But she knew that Kit would never come back to bed now that he was up, and the bed wasn’t half as warm and comfortable without him in it. 

She sighed and sat up, taking a moment to putter around the bedroom and pull on a sweatshirt and slippers, and then wandering sleepily out of the bedroom towards the kitchen. Their tiny apartment had a matching tiny kitchen, tacked on the side of the general purpose room that contained the (alarmingly sentient) television, their desks, and a battered old couch. It wasn’t much, but increasingly Nita found herself thinking of their little flat as home.

Kit was already on the couch, eating cereal whilst also maintaining a conversation (if you could call it that) with the TV and petting the tom-cat, who was trying to act as though this was entirely beneath his dignity, but actually enjoying himself thoroughly.

Nita slipped into the kitchen to make herself some toast, automatically pulling two mugs out of the cupboard as she put on the kettle. Once the teas and toast were done, she settled down on the carpet next to the couch and handed Kit his mug, which he accepted with a warm smile and a press of his lips to her cheek. 

While she ate her toast and Kit returned to his conversation (now more of an argument) with the TV, she reached absently into the pocket of other-space where she kept her collection of wizardly items, and scrambled around for an object that felt as familiar in her hand as an old friend. 

Nita paged open her Manual to the section that contained updates on her current projects, and any information about wizardly goings-on in the local area. These days it was also her main source of information on her sister, Dairine. 

Kit leaned forward and rested his chin on Nita’s shoulder. “What’s Dari up to, then?” he asked. 

Nita shrugged, jostling Kit slightly, and tilted the page so that he could read the information displayed there. 

“Your guess is as good as mine. The updates Spot has been feeding me have been so technical lately that I have trouble even beginning to figure out what she’s doing.” 

Kit leaned in closer and trailed his finger along a line of text. “Whatever it is, it’s drawing on a lot of energy,” he said. “Does she really have that kind of raw power at the moment?” 

Nita looked at the line he was pointing at and then shook her head. “I think that number there is actually power she is drawing for an external source, but like I said, most of this stuff goes right over my head.” 

Kit huffed out a laugh and leaned back. “Me too, if I’m being honest. Seems like she’s having fun though.” He stood up from the couch and gathered all their breakfast dishes together. 

“We have any plans for today?” he asked over his shoulder, as he walked into the kitchen. 

Nita shook her head absently, still glancing over the updates for the local area. There wasn’t much to hold her attention though, so she turned to look over at Kit and realised he was still waiting for a reply.

“Uh, no not that I can think of. Unless anything comes up with that group-intervention on the ridge, that is.”

Kit grinned. “So we have the whole day off?” 

“Well, apart from studying for my biology test that’s coming up…” Nita trailed off at the pouty face Kit was making. “But I suppose that could wait for a few days. What did you have in mind?”

Kit’s grin was back in full force. “I was just chatting with the TV and I think I can probably persuade it to find us a channel playing a Star Wars marathon. I was thinking we could laze about in our pyjamas and watch movies. Actually take a break for once?”

Nita sighed out a smile. Re-watching Star Wars for the fiftieth time was probably not a productive use of her time, but she was already looking forward to a day of doing exactly nothing. 

“Let’s do it,” she told Kit with a smile.

It wasn’t until after four o’clock that Nita’s phone interrupted their peace, and she picked up the phone to Elody, one of the local wizards she and Kit had met since moving states for college. The minor crisis that had ensued had taken the rest of the afternoon to straighten out, and required both Kit and Nita to get dressed and leave their flat. Which was probably as much peace and quiet as either of them should have expected.

 

\--

Nita was in a Wednesday morning lecture, her attention split between taking notes and trying to debug a half-written spell diagram. The combination was making her head feel like a block of concrete, so the distraction of her phone buzzing was entirely welcome.

She pulled out the phone to see a message from Carmela, asking if she had time to grab lunch later. The invitation was slightly pointless, given that Nita and Carmela had had an ongoing arrangement to have lunch together on Wednesdays since the start of the year. Ever since the week when Nita had unexpectedly been needed halfway across the galaxy, however, Carmela had made a point of checking they were still on.

_Sure, looking forward to it :)_

_Yay! I have NEWS! Can’t wait! xx_

Nita smiled at her phone, in the same slightly patronising way that Kit often did when talking to his sister. Despite the fact that neither of them shared her enthusiasm toward the world in general (was it necessary to put three exclamation points in a single text message?) they both loved her dearly. In fact, Nita thought that Carmela might be one of her favourite people.

She spent the rest of the class taking her notes sensibly, having set aside the spell diagram as a problem for another time, when she had enough brain power to decipher Elody’s typically disorganised notes on the power structures. The girl was a genius at thinking outside of the box, but the term ‘organised chaos’ had never applied to anyone more, Nita thought.

She passed her next class in much the same way, and then emerged blinking into the harsh light of a winter midday. She picked her way across the campus, heading for the small cafe where she normally met Carmela. 

Nita spotted Carmela as soon as she stepped through the door, the neon brights of her outfit impossible to miss even across the crowded room. 

“Hey, ‘Mela,” Nita said cheerfully, sliding into the chair across the table from her friend. 

“Hey there, Juanita Louise,” Carmela replied, her smile wide and genuine. Nita rolled her eyes in response. Once upon a time, she would have railed against such teasing but these days she saw it as endearing. Most of the time, anyway.

A perky waitress whom Carmela addressed by name came over to the table and took their orders, and then Carmela turned to Nita. 

“Aren’t you going to ask about my news, Neets?” Carmela asked, her eyebrows raised.

“Yes, of course I am! What’s up?” Nita replied. 

“Well,” Carmela started, leaning in conspiratorially. “Don’t tell Kit because he’ll freak out, but I’ve been dating someone and it’s getting kind of serious.”

Nita sat back, trying to smother her grin and paste an appropriately shocked and amazed expression on her face. 

“Wow, how serious is serious?” Nita asked.

“It’s been a few weeks now,” Carmela told her, and Nita’s expression morphed into genuine shock. 

“Wait, seriously?” Ever since Carmela first discovered boys, she had been interested in, even infatuated with, specific guys. But she had never been good at staying in a relationship for more than a few days. 

Carmela was nodding, about as shy as Nita had ever seen her. 

“How is this the first I’ve heard of this? Who’s the guy?” Nita asked.

“It was new! I didn’t want to freak out Kit and you guys are so...” she made a complicated gesture that Nita didn’t even try and decipher. “I wanted to make sure it was real before I announced it to anyone.”

“That is... surprisingly mature,” Nita said slowly. Carmela rolled her eyes. 

“What, like I’m never mature? I can be mature Jua-” Carmela said heatedly, before Nita cut her off. 

“Okay, that’s enough! Of course you can be mature, ‘Mela.” 

Carmela gave her a sunny smile, and Nita laughed. “Also, you didn’t answer my question. I want to know all about this guy who has stolen your heart and kept it for longer than a week!”

“Um, well. To start off with, she’s not a guy. Her name is Sara.” Carmela looked up at Nita with an uncharacteristically unsure look on her face. Nita felt a smile breaking through her initial shock. 

“Oh man,” she said, now full-out grinning. “Kit is going to freak out.”

 

\--

 

Nita was sitting at her desk, with her head pillowed on her obnoxiously thick biology textbook, when she felt (or perhaps sensed would be a better word) Kit popping into existence in the small thicket of mulberry trees across from their building. 

One of the weirdest side effects that had come with moving in together had been the increased sensitivity to one another’s presence. Tom and Carl assured them that it was completely normal for two wizard living together to experience some odd changes, but Nita had caught the look they had exchanged, and she was guessing that even they weren’t as in tune as she and Kit were these days. 

By the time that Kit was opening the door, Nita had abandoned biology and was in the kitchen making tea.

“You’re late. Professor Keeley keep you after class again?” Nita asked, teasingly.

Kit made a face at her, and then flopped onto the couch with an air of great weariness.

“No, but there was some kind of market day going on, so I had to walk all the way to the edge of campus to find somewhere quiet to do my Scotty spell.” Nita laughed at Kit’s put-upon tone.

“If you weren’t so squeamish about using my spot, it wouldn’t be such a problem,” Nita said. Kit gave her a scathing look.

“Neets. I am not going to use the abandoned girls bathroom in Albert Hall to teleport out of.” 

Nita just laughed at him, and he spent a moment frowning at her, before giving up and shifting over on the couch in a voiceless invitation for Nita to join him. She did.

“How was your day?” He asked, and then took advantage of her slight distraction to steal her mug and take a sip of her tea.

“Hey!” Nita said, grabbing the mug back. “My day was good, I had lunch with Carmela.”

“Oh yes,” Kit said, in a tone of mock wisdom. “Secret women’s business. How is she?” 

Nita thought back to their main topic of lunchtime conversation and considered how to answer the question. 

“She’s good, still treading water in most of her classes I think.” Carmela had made the executive decision to take a ‘gap year’ after high school, and then piggybacked on Kit and Nita’s choice of college. Her degree in linguistics featured a half dozen language courses, all of which were far below Carmela’s level of competence. 

Kit snorted. “Of course she is.”

“I think she wants to catch up with the both of us next week, maybe hangout here and video-call your parents,” Nita continued, as though he hadn’t interrupted. 

“What, no double date bowling trips?” Kit asked scathingly. “No new boyfriend to show off?”

“Nope,” Nita said, sipping at her tea to hide her amused expression. “I think ‘Mela has decided to take a break from boyfriends, at least for a while.” 

This statement produced an expression on Kit’s face that managed to straddle the line between pleased and bemused. Nita snorted attractively into her mug of tea. 

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Kit said dubiously. Nita just smiled. 

“If you are done quizzing me on the details of your sister’s love life, do you wanna take a look at the spell diagram for the ridge thing? It’s doing my head in, but maybe a second pair of eyes will help…”

They spent the rest of the afternoon in cheerful conference over the tangled web of the spell. They fell into an easy rhythm, Nita examining the strands and passing data to Kit, who then created separate strings of glowing light for them to weave back into the spell.

By the time that Kit flopped back onto the couch, groaning about needing dinner, the spell diagram was draped over the coffee table. Where before it had been a messy tangle of light, it was now an intricately balanced pattern.

“Alright, we will see what the other guys think of that,” Nita said, with a satisfied sigh. 

“If everyone’s happy with it, we might be able to knock this out on the weekend. I’d prefer to do it sooner rather than later, and take the strain off the patch spells.” Kit said this all as he wandered toward the kitchen, opening the fridge in a predictable search for food.

“It’s not like it’s a strain on _you_ ,” Nita said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully. “Mina is handling the patch, and you know what her power-levels are like at the moment. A few stasis spells are hardly a strain.”

“Mina’s still a kid. She won’t have all that power forever, you know,” Kit grumbled. Nita laughed at his sour expression.

“You sound like an old man,” she told him. He pouted at her. 

“Are you going to come over here and help me cook dinner, or what?” Kit asked, in a wounded tone. Nita grinned at him, and pushed herself up from the couch to trail over to the kitchen. They puttered around making dinner, maintaining the back and forth of the teasing conversation. 

It was not the kind of life any sane person would consider normal, but it was soft and easy, and Nita found it hard to imagine anything else.

\--

Carmela came over for dinner on Monday evening, trailing into their flat in a gauzy haze of bright pinks and purples, and accompanied by a strong and tantalisingly familiar smell. 

“Is that… churros?” Kit asked, sticking his head out of the kitchen with an awed look on his face. 

“Nita, did you know that there is a churros place between your apartment and campus? Probably not, because you guys never walk, do you?” Nita and Kit exchanged guilty looks. Carmela presented Nita with a slightly greasy and still warm paper bag, and then turned to Kit.

“Hey baby brother, long time no see!” Carmela exclaimed, pulling Kit into a hug. Over her shoulder, Nita watched him mouth “Help me” at her, and had to smother her laughter.

“Wait, where is this churros place, ‘Mela? I’ve never seen it,” Nita asked as Kit struggled out of his sister’s grip. 

“A couple blocks from campus. The guy who owns it is a total cutie, he gave me extras because I told him I was having dinner with my sister-in-law,” Carmela broke off in laughter at the horrified expression on Kit’s face. 

The horror melted into a grin as he asked teasingly, “So is the churros guy your newest crush, then?”

“Ew, _Kit_ ,” Carmela said, wrinkling her nose. “He’s like, a million years old!”

With that, she swept through to the living room to coo over the tom-cat. Kit and Nita exchanged glances, Kit’s expression full of barely-restrained exasperation and Nita’s full of not-so-hidden amusement. In one movement, they followed Carmela.

Kit spent the first half of the evening lying on the couch in a position of defeat, making annoyed faces at Nita whenever Carmela said anything that upset him, which was practically every second word out of her mouth. 

“There is this girl in my German class who can tie a cherry stem in a knot using her tongue,” Carmela told Kit delightedly.

“Why do you _know_ that?” Kit asked, desperately. “At what point in your German course did the topic of cherry stems come up?

“Our German professor is a very forward-thinking man, Kit,” Carmela said. Kit’s reply was nothing more than a strangled groan.

Nita stood up from where she had been muffling her laughter into the arm of the couch. 

“Should I order pizza, or were we going to video-call your parents first?” She asked. Carmela smiled beatifically up at her.

“Order the pizza, and we’ll call them now before it comes,” Carmela said.

Kit sat up and sighed weightily. “Works for me.”

“Okay, I’ll go order. You,” Nita pointed at Kit. “Set up the call, and stop letting ‘Mela wind you up over nothing.”

Kit grumbled half-heartedly, and then when Nita continued to point accusingly at him, stood up and laughed.

“Fine, fine,” he said, and crossed the room to the TV, pausing on his way to bestow a kiss on his sister’s cheek. Nita exchanged a smile with Carmela, and then slipped down the hall to find her phone.

By the time she had called in their order and then made a pit stop to pull on a sweatshirt, she could hear sounds of conversation emerging from the living room. She hurried down the hall to join in.

“Hey Mama,” Kit was saying as Nita walked in. “You have a shift tonight?” 

On the TV, Nita could see Kit’s mama dressed in her nurse's scrubs, and sitting next to her was Kit’s father. Most televisions, Nita knew, were not capable of making high-definition video calls. But then again, most televisions also didn’t chat to their owners or show several hundred alien shopping channels. It was just one of those perks of being a wizard (or being related to a wizard).

“Hey, guys,” Nita said, crouching down next to Kit and Carmela so that she would be in frame. 

“Nita! How are you?” Kit’s mama asked. 

“I’m good, Mrs. Rodriguez,” Nita replied. Both of Kit’s parents beamed at her briefly, before moving their attention back to their children. Nita sat with her thigh pressed comfortably up against Kit’s, letting the cheerful conversation flow over her, while Kit and Carmela updated their parents on the current state of their classes, social lives and diets. 

During a slight lull in the conversation, Carmela cleared her throat loudly, attracting everyone's attention. She paused, and exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Nita.

“I have some, uh, news,” Carmela said. Kit was giving her a concerned look at the hesitation in her voice.

“Don’t worry, it’s not bad!” Carmela reassured him quickly, and then took a deep breath. “I’ve just, well- I’m dating someone. Seriously. Her name is Sara and she’s really lovely, and I just wanted to let you all know now even though we’ve been dating for a little while. But I wanted to be sure I was sure before I said anything.”

The end of Carmela’s sentence came out in somewhat of a rush, and there was a moment of silence while everyone processed what she had said. And then both Kit and his parents started talking at once. 

“Wait you’re dating a girl-”

“That’s wonderful sweetie-”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner-”

“Baby really that’s wonderful-”

“Where is she from-”

In the midst of the barrage of exclamations and questions, Nita heard the buzzer go off. _Perfect timing_ , she thought as she slipped out of the room, still grinning at the memory of the look on Kit’s face the moment he had processed what Carmela had said. Two parts utter shock and one part proud, Nita thought. Which was an understandable mix, really.

By the time she had buzzed the pizza guy up and paid for the pizzas, the noise from the living room had died down from a roar to an undertone. As Nita carried the pizzas into the kitchen, she caught sight of Kit and Carmela hugging, their parent’s looking proud and teary on the television screen. 

Nita left them to it, and busied herself finding plates and napkins until Kit and Carmela said goodbye to their parents. While Kit ended the call and fiddled with the television, Carmela came over to the kitchen. 

“Come here, you,” Nita said, catching the unusually raw look in Carmela’s eyes and pulling her into a hug.

“What is this?” Carmela asked dryly. “This is more hugs than I’ve gotten from the two of you all year.”

Nita caught Kit’s eye over Carmela’s shoulder and smiled wryly. His answering smile had some of the same rawness Nita had spotted in Carmela’s expression. She reached out and caught his wrist as he headed toward the pizza boxes. 

“Not so fast,” she said, laughingly. Kit struggled for a moment, and then gave up, stepping over to wrap his arms around both Nita and Carmela. 

“My two favorite girls,” he said, his voice carefully light. 

“Ew,” Carmela said, struggling to extricate herself from both Nita and Kit’s grip. After a moment, Nita released her, laughing at her expression of mock disgust. Carmela turned toward the pizza boxes with an exaggerated huff.

“What, no expression of sisterly love in return?” Kit asked, teasingly. He turned to Nita with an over exaggerated despairing expression. “She doesn’t really love us, Neets. She’s just using us for the free pizza.” 

Nita was laughing too hard to reply, clinging to the kitchen counter. Carmela turned back around, plate of pizza in hand, and surveyed Nita and Kit, who had also started giggling. 

“But then how do you explain the churros?” She asked, and sailed out of the kitchen with her nose in the air. 

\--

It rained that night, after Carmela finally left. Nita’s sides ached from laughing and her stomach ached from eating her weight in pizza. She stood on the freezing cold tiles of their tiny bathroom and listened to the hush of the rain on the street outside, while she brushed her teeth side by side with Kit. 

Their bedtime ritual was wordless. They stepped around each other like a slow and careful waltz that they both knew by heart, something easy and thoughtless.

Nita got into bed first, lying with her eyes open and watching the rain slide in tear tracks down the window pane. The cars passing along their street were unusually muffled by the water, just a far-away hushing noise.

Kit climbed into bed slowly, like he felt just as filled with happiness as Nita did and he didn’t want to move too quickly for fear of some of it spilling out. 

“Hey,” he said softly, laying down so they were nose to nose.

“Hi,” Nita said. 

“That thing with Carmela,” he started, and then paused. Nita smiled at him. “She already told you, didn’t she.” 

It wasn’t a question, but Nita answered it anyway. “Yeah, she did.”

“Why?” Kit asked. “Why didn’t she tell me. Then. When she told you, I mean.”

Nita huffed out a breath, like the ghost of a laugh.

“You’re her brother, Kit,” she said. “It mattered what you thought, so she needed more time to find the courage to tell you.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Nita said, smiling at him again. “Oh.”

Kit reached out and hooked his fingers into the hem of Nita’s sleep shirt. 

“I’m glad she did. Tell me, that is,” Kit said, smiling softly. 

“Yeah,” said Nita.

Then there was a pause that lasted long enough it slipped into sleep. Neither of them said goodnight, because it wasn’t something they said anymore. 

Saying goodnight is like saying goodbye; it’s only important if you won’t be there in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://ellianderjoy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
